On his show “The O’Reilly Factor” in 2013, O’Reilly told a guest, “I was in a situation one time, in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands, where my photographer got run down and then hit his head and was bleeding from the ear on the concrete. And the army was chasing us. I had to make a decision. And I dragged him off, you know, but at the same time, I’m looking around and trying to do my job, but I figure I had to get this guy out of there because that was more important.”

Mother Jones challenged some of these claims. O’Reilly responded by accusing the magazine of trying to smear him to hurt Fox News, and said the report’s co-author, David Corn, is a liar and an “irresponsible guttersnipe.”

Eric Engberg, a CBS correspondent who was also in Buenos Aires at the time, defended Corn in a Facebook post on Friday and said, “It was not a war zone or even close. It was an ‘expense account zone.’”

Longtime NBC News correspondent George Lewis, who was also there at the time, agreed with Engberg, writing on Facebook, “Cushiest war I ever covered.”

Did O’Reilly’s photographer get “run down” and bloodied?

CNN has interviewed seven people who were there for CBS, and none of them recall anyone from the network being injured.

Today CBS News is confirming that reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was hacked, and the entire right wing blogosphere is jumping to the conclusion that our evil President must be behind it, of course.

That investigation has reached the following conclusions, according to CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair:

“A cyber security firm hired by CBS News has determined through forensic analysis that Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012. Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts. While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data.

This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion.

CBS News is taking steps to identify the responsible party and their method of access.”

The Justice Department has issued a categorical denial that they had anything to do with the breach. But whether or not you’re inclined to believe them, it’s far more likely that Atkisson’s computer was compromised by much more prosaic means, the same way millions of other computers have been hacked — by a virus or a worm that gained access via Atkisson’s own insecure practices.

Dan Rather went on Reddit yesterday for one of their “Ask Me Anything” sessions, and inevitably, the subject of the faked George W. Bush National Guard memos came up. Reddit user “RadOwl” asked:

Did G.W. Bush skip out on his National Guard duties, as you reported? You really took a beating for covering that story!

Rather responded:

the short answer is yes but i’ll post a short video with more detail soon. EDIT: here is the video

That was followed by a question from “TomSwirly:”

Many people, myself included, wondered if the whole thing was a trap - to discredit you by planting documents that were forged but that contained information that you strongly suspected to be true from other sources.

number 1 - the facts of case are not in dispute. Number 2 - no one had ever established that the documents were forged (those who attack them argued that we didn’t do enough to demonstrate that they were not forged) The whole documents argument was a camouflage - what was described in the documents was factual. As for the trap argument — could have been, might have been but nobody has ever proven that. What I know, all I know, is we reported a true story. Whatever you think of the documents, facts are facts. Fact #1 - a young George Bush was put into a “champagne unit” of the Air National Guard through the influence of his father to ensure he wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam. Fact #2 - once in this “champagne unit” the young George Bush did reasonably well for awhile and then he disappeared - he just took off. No accountability. He was absent without leave for a very long time. Fact #3 - he never completed his obligation the length of service. He got out well before his time was up.

In the video linked above, Rather says:

“Any number of people, powerful people, for their own personal, ideological and partisan political reasons, didn’t like the fact that the story got out, and we were the first to put it on television … and they sought to discredit it.”

I’m flattered that Dan Rather thinks I’m powerful, but he couldn’t be more wrong about my reason for debunking his story. I wasn’t the only one who helped bring the phony documents to light, and I can’t speak for anyone else, but in my case it was not about politics or ideology — it was about exposing a blatant, obvious fraud being perpetrated on the American public.

Facts is facts, and the simple fact is that the documents were indeed proven to be frauds, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Dan Rather is only embarrassing himself by continuing to deny this, and I’m sorry to see it; he’s done some great journalism in his day, and it’s sad that his ego won’t let him admit this mistake and move on.

I won’t go through all the evidence again in this post, but here’s our master index of the story as it happened, in chronological order: CBS Killian Document Index.

I still remember the feeling when I first opened the memo dated August 1973 in Adobe Acrobat, and realized instantly that I was looking at a fake, a document created with a modern word processor and not a 1970s typewriter. When I decided to see if MS Word could reproduce it, I expected to have to do some fiddling around with margins and fonts, etc., and was frankly a little shocked when my very first efforts produced an exact match, using the default tab stops and font settings.

Here’s the infamous “throbbing memo” — the animated GIF I created by typing a copy of the August 1973 memo into Microsoft Word, using Word’s default settings without changing anything, and overlaying the printed copy on the PDF document released by CBS. As you can see, they’re not just similar, they’re identical:

To salvage some credibility from his debunked story, Rather is still clinging to the “fake but accurate” line too. The problem is that without specific evidence about specific offenses, the story that Bush received preferential treatment in the TANG was only borderline interesting.

I mean, a powerful person’s son gets preferential treatment?! Who’s ever heard of that happening?

What might have made Rather’s story an election-changer was the specific nature of the allegations, based on the National Guard memos. And those were faked. Phonies. Frauds. Bogus. End of story.

Local Media Monitorre: #509 stabby I showed you Steubenville. That shows rape culture. You didn't respond. Now this comment of yours above. Look at it this way: when slavery was legal, "people on average act(ed) the way people do on average" and ...

This is an awful story; in Tahrir Square on the day Mubarak stepped down, CBS News reporter Lara Logan was separated from her crew, sexually assaulted, and beaten in a sustained attack that only ended when Egyptian soldiers stormed the mob. Here’s the CBS News statement.

(CBSNews) On Friday February 11, the day Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a 60 MINUTES story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy.

In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering.

There will be no further comment from CBS News and Correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time.

lostlakehikerre: #223 Renaissance_Man Well, here's a news article. written by Michael CalderoneThe article made note of previous instances of abuse of reporters, including Logan. Those responsible for the earlier incidents were Mubarak supporters. By implication, the article seems to be ...

CBS News and the New York Times took a poll of Tea Party Supporters: Who They Are and What They Believe. As with all polls, both pro- and anti-tea people will find things to support their arguments. I haven’t made any secret of how I feel about the tea party movement: I think it’s a deeply divisive and destructive political movement based on unfocused populist rage ginned up by cynical astroturfers, Fox News, and leaders who are often crazier than the followers, and I see nothing here that will change my mind.

Obama Derangement Syndrome is endemic:

Ninety-two percent of Tea Party supporters believe President Obama’s policies are moving the country toward socialism. Fifty-two percent of Americans overall share that belief.

There’s a disturbing amount of support for Birtherism (and other conspiracy theories, such as the “sekrit Moslem” theory), which will come as no surprise to anyone who’s followed this movement.

Thirty percent of Tea Party supporters believe Mr. Obama was born in another country, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Another 29 percent say they don’t know.

If you’re looking for coherent ideologies, forget it. Besides Birtherism, the poll highlights several other points at which the tea party crowd seems seriously reality-challenged. They can’t define what they mean by “socialism,” even though almost all of them are convinced we’re heading towards it. They’re angrily opposed to the health care reform bill, but they say entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost. They’re an anti-tax movement but most of them think their taxes are fair. Two thirds of them think global warming is a hoax perpetrated by mad scientists out to trick the world.

And the two most popular political-media figures with the tea-heads: Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.

Krukre: #95 SanFranciscoZionist Not sure if you use this expression in the US or not, but this is what we call "Kicking the ladder away after you". The more I learn out the Tea Party, the more and more I'm ...

Charles Cooper of CBS News noticed our post about Barack Obama’s smear of the Cambridge Police Department, and mentioned us in this borderline incoherent editorial: When It’s Not So Black And White.

(CBS) As soon as President Obama was asked for the details in the case were destined to get pushed into the background.

Huh? Want to try that one again, Charles?

For good measure, Little Green Footballs accused President Obama of playing the race card.

What would you call it when the President of the United States says he doesn’t know the facts in a racially charged case, then proceeds to opine about it anyway — and labels the police “stupid,” accusing them of unjustly arresting Prof. Gates, even though he admits he doesn’t know what really happened?

Making his first foray into a divisive racial issue, President Barack Obama sided with Henry Louis Gates Jr. after the black scholar’s arrest by a white police officer, a striking departure from Obama’s “post-racial” impartiality.

Saying that the white sergeant acted “stupidly” in arresting Gates, Obama inflamed an already volatile topic. Although he backed off that comment slightly Thursday, Obama stood by his assessment that the arrest of the Harvard professor “doesn’t make sense.”

After years of deftly defusing racial land mines, why did Obama speak out now? Because Gates is a friend and fellow Harvard man? Because racial profiling is an issue close to the president’s heart? Or could Obama, contemplating the idea of a white cop questioning a black man in his own home, have lost his legendary cool?

But when CBS News wants to get its smear on, they point the finger at LGF and say we “accused” Obama of playing the race card — when he very clearly did, and pretty much everyone admits it.

Oh well. I’ll get over it. After all, we’ve received a total of 8 visits all day from the link in Cooper’s editorial.

That’s right. Eight visits from the website of one of America’s major TV networks — the network that tried to tilt a presidential election with fraudulent documents.

JPL17re: #389 BIGDUKE 6 Wow, that would mean that someone in the Administration actually thought that asking that question, and giving the answer that Obama gave, was a good idea. Looks like we gave Bozo the keys to the White ...

This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). Then browse to a site you want to post, select some text on the page to use for a quote, click the bookmarklet, and the Pages posting window will appear with the title, text, and any embedded video or audio files already filled in, ready to go.

Or... you can just click this button to open the Pages posting window right away.

Westboro Baptist Church's attempts to protest at Leonard Nimoy funeral thwarted by inability to find it Unaffiliated Christian group failed to find church where service to commemorate the life of Star Trek star was being held. The Westboro Baptist Church ...

Buried somewhere deep inside the code of some Web browsers and websites is an old, weak version of encryption that can easily be cracked. And the only reason it exists is because of bad U.S. policies that have since ...

Justice Department Spokesman Marc Raimondi released the following statement Tuesday: "Three documents - a criminal Information, a plea agreement, and a statement of facts - were filed today in the United States District Court for the Western District of ...

Morgan Whitaker exposes where wingnuts are getting their "information" on "the evil, un-American, Kenyan, Marxist Muslim" Obama. This story is about a year old, but its still relevant today. David Jackson, of Belmont, NC, does not like President Obama. He ...

What, precisely, is this woman's major malfunction? For going on 30 years, she has been the target of every strange conspiracy theory that the half-bright mind of man can dream up. She knows they're out there, pining to have ...

Jeb Bush has been adamant that he will not switch his positions on two issues, immigration and Common Core standards, that will generate conservative opposition in the Republican primaries. But he just made a major concession to conservatives on ...

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Samsung over what it says is the recording of private conversations in homes through the company's television sets. The privacy rights group filed a complaint with ...

From the National Center for Science Education House File 272, introduced in the Iowa House of Representatives on February 17, 2015, and referred to the House Committee on Education, would, if enacted, prevent Iowa from adopting the Next Generation ...

Kevin talks about a pervasive industry problem - being compliant according to your auditor and their checklist, but still being highly vulnerable. One of the common faults in compliance is senior level managers who don't really know enough end up ...

Curt Schilling showed a young punk you don't mess with his daughter on twitter. Schilling's fond paternal congratulations were met with "tweets with the word rape, bloody underwear and pretty much every other vulgar and defiling word you could likely ...

In this era of raw nerves, protests and increased tensions, Americans really want leadership. It's natural for the public and the media to desperately seek out examples that appear to affirm that our nation is changing for the better. ...

By this process, you can arrive at a conclusion like this: To win the War on Women, you better put a ring on it. At CPAC, conservatives dedicated an entire panel to "The Future of Marriage." One could be ...

Earlier today interested Redditors posed questions to Poitras and Greenwald in Los Angeles, while Snowden posted from Moscow. A rare opportunity for average people to directly communicate with the (in)famous leaker.See the entire discussion HERE Redditor masondog13 asks: What's the ...

Wait a minute... watching Fox News and the Republican talking heads I learned that all Muslims are bad bad bad and in no way can Islam be interpreted as any sort of peaceful religion. news.yahoo.com OSLO (Reuters) - More than ...

For the last three years it's been my privilege to help coach a dedicated group of young women who have founded the first Women's Flat-Track Roller Derby league in Israel. They've learned, trained, fought, and worked unbelievably hard to bring ...

Added bold is all mine. this was an awkward way to go about gun control anyway. It clearly impacts the law abiding far more than felons, and is by that definition inefficient and intrusive at best. Gonna have to do ...